What is Style? Part II

This question is no easier to answer than at the beginning of the term.  I remember writing that style is not how something is simply written, but an active voice put to words in writing. I’m re-thinking that answer.  Style can encompass a plethora of things.  Not just applying a “voice” to writing.  But applying techniques, such as the ones found in Williams Style: Toward Clarity and Grace that when applied right, can improve the style and clarity of writing, but when applied wrong, can lead to misunderstandings in written and even oral communication.  The collaborative video that my group, Group 1 in the online portion, shows this so well.  Even a person who is speaking with unclear and undefined language can cause so much miscommunication.

When I think of style now I also think of Ancient Rhetoric in correspondence with the YouTube commercials we had to do.  Through this project I learned that many commercial script writers use the same styles the ancients used such as metaphor, “grand style”, and language that evoked emotion or question.  I had to analyze the Tiger Woods commercial which was a perfect example of this type of Ancient style, being used to persuade an audience to “forgive” Tiger for his affair.  I would think that after this class, style has a less definite meaning.  In other words, I cannot describe it in one sentence as I’ve had in the first blog post.  I can only think of several applications of style that are meant to persuade, clarify, and evoke emotion.

Yes, style can and does determine clarity.   And depending on the writing, it can include a “voice”.  But can also determine whether one laughs, cries, get’s angry, or it can lead to many interpretations of what’s written on paper or recorded in video.

Style encompasses everything.  That’s the only way I can see to put it.

Final Peer Review Recap

This time peer review was about the same as the rest (as always).  I never really notice major differences in the process although we changed it up just a bit towards t end of the semester.

I find peer review useful because you get detailed perspectives from others.  My response is the same from the last time I wrote about peer review but I’ll say it again.  One of the criteria of these essays is to make sure that our essay is accessible, not just to the teacher, but to a wider audience.  Doing peer review in this way definitely helps us to write in a way that may be foreign to us.  Usually when asked to write an essay in a class we are asked to “please the teacher”.  This is a refreshing way of writing and takes a step outside of the norm.

In the beginning, when we first did peer reviews, I thought it was great but also, looking back, I see it was a bit unstable.  I agree with some of my classmates that were concerned that their grade was suffering because the same people would not be reviewing their essay after the first peer review.  That process could definitely lead to inconsistencies in opinion and ruin someone’s grade.  But the method seems to have been perfected, and I’m content with that.

I’ve learned a lot from the way others write.  Sometimes I am tempted to try to make an essay more thoughtful and more complicated than it has to be.  I’ve learned that I don’t really speak as clear as I thought I did, and my writing sometimes comes across strange.  When reading others essays I noticed that they kept their work simple but also thoughtful.

 

Looking back, looking forward

I believe that what applies most to the video making process is the application of ancient style.  Even though videos are spoken orally, they contain many of the elements of writing.  For example, I remember in my Tiger Woods analysis I discovered many examples of rhetor style.  I don’ t think I need to go back over my whole essay, but it just goes to show that writing and speech does not have that many differences.  The commercial process still needs a written script, and that script must evoke emotion (depending on what the commercial is about) or laughter, which is a part of the job description in rhetor style.  After beginning this process I’m beginning to see that Plato’s talk of how writing becomes artificial is a bit off to me.  Once again, scripts have to be written in videos, and these written scripts can be written so well that emotion can be evoked; taken off of a piece of paper, and applied in a video.

I’m beginning to think that although the methods of writing have evolved over the years (lambskin, paper and pencil, computers) it will never fade away.  Writing is something that is absolute.  We need it to communicate ideas, no matter what way we choose to do it.  In this world that is moving forward, no matter how technical savvy we become, we will always need that back up technology that has withstood the test of time.  I think that’s the conclusion I have come to for this project.  Speaking styles are greatly influenced by writing styles, and we cannot create a worthwhile movie, commercial, or TV show without writing to plan and organize them first.  The technology called writing has always been there, the only thing that has changed is the means of expression.

Peer Review Recap Part III

This peer review was about the same.  I didn’t notice any differences.  I did however, make sure I was very detailed.  I noticed that students were commenting that they were lacking adequate instruction and suggestions, so this time, like the last, I tried to give specific examples, paragraph references and sentences from the essay.  I am wondering how the rest of this process will go, because if I’m not mistaken we are going to have the same reviewers review?  I mistakenly thought that the vote was on our names being on our essays.  But all-in-all, I believe this was about the same, but I anticipate the feedback to be much more beneficial since we will have the same ones reviewing our final as for our rough draft.

This process I also think was a bit more difficult.  A few students didn’t understand the assignment or didn’t finish (including myself because of a struggle to apply the rules to another subject).  The peer review was incomplete for me.

Williams vs. Strunk and White

There are some very notable differences that I’ve noticed in both readings.  For one, Strunk and White take on an authoritative tone.  An “absolute” tone.  The Elements of style clearly states in the introduction that you get a sense that the writer is “a drill sergeant”, expelling all these grammatical rules and suggestions that you cannot help feel are meant to come across as “absolute” in a sense.  Although, I’m not saying that they are absolute, it just seems that way.

Willams writing takes on a more suggestive tone.  He gives rules and suggestions but also suggests in which cases these rules and suggestions may not apply all the time.  However, his work is more thorough, gives much more examples (although they are sometimes overwhelming and much harder to follow without a second re-read), and presents the “here’s why” to his advice.  He says in a way “here’s the bad example, now here’s the great example, doesn’t that seem much more clear to you?”

Furthermore, Williams gives many more examples of the causes of what goes wrong in writing. This is what makes Williams writing much more useful to the reader.  While The Elements of Style is straightforward and gives examples, Williams gives suggestions that will actually aid in turning incoherent, wordy essays into clear and effective writing.  In order to improve a writer needs to know exactly what goes wrong and when, and Willams does that much more effectively that Strunk and White.

I couldn’t say that Strunk and White is more effective save the fact that it is easier to digest. I can only say that it is easier to comprehend and pay attention to.  The suggestions are short an too the point, such as Rule 1: Form the possessive singular of nouns by adding ‘s.  Followed by examples.  It is because of the way that Williams book is written that makes it a bit ironic.  For example, he talks about reducing “wordiness”, with jargon, however, chapter 5 on Coherence contains “jargon” and excessive wordiness.  I definitely needed a dictionary by my side through this chapter.  To take it a step further he even admits this irony:

“Some cautions: some of the vocabulary in this chapter will be unfamiliar.  We dislike jargon as intensely as anyone, but we have had to create terms for new concepts about coherence that we think writers must understand.  These principples ar also more abstract than those about subjects and characters, about nominalizations and verbs, because coherence is abstract; we cannot point to it as we can point to a noun…”

Overall, I think that Elements of Style is meant to serve the purpose of a quick and easy reference, while Style: Toward Clarity and Grace is meant to do exactly what the title says; to help the writer enhance their writing style.

Revising with Williams

I chose to revise this sentence with Williams’ suggestions:

Original: Basic undergraduate degrees conferred by the Board of Regents on recommendation of the president and faculty are the bachelor of science (B.S.) and the bachelor of arts (B.A.) degrees, described fully in the introduction to the College of Arts and Sciences.

Revised: The Board of Regents confer that the basic undergraduate degrees are the bachelor of science and the bachelor of arts.  The degrees are fully described in the College of Art and Sciences introduction.

This revision was difficult, because as we see in Williams Style: Toward Clarity and Grace, there are many ways we can go about making this a little clear to the student.  On it’s own, I could not understand this sentence and had to read it more than once before I finally decided that this sentence fits Williams’ description of bad writing.  I thought that if you are trying to inform students on what degrees are, this is NOT the way to start off.

I felt that if I could just reword the sentence first, then I can think of the rules later, and go from there.  My first thought was how could I make this sentence coherent to a student?  I wanted to know whether I could use passive or active voice and thought that the passive was more appropriate.  Williams gives advice on how to choose between passive and active, so after much deliberation on his examples, I settled on using an active voice, maintaining the Board of Regents as the subject.

I noticed that nominalization fits here as well.  The sentence was long and incoherent, and I felt it should be broken apart into two sentences to make it easier on the reader.  In this case, nominalization, which is the subject referring to a previous sentence worked perfectly for what I was trying to do.

As you can see I dropped the bit about the president and faculty recommending the Board of Regents to discuss the basic degrees.  I’m thinking to drop this necessary statement.

 

Peer Review Recap Pt 2

Okay, I got to be honest.  This peer review was muuuuuuuccchhhhh better!  This time the reviewers actually gave me SPECIFIC examples of where the language needed to be clarified, or which parts my essay were confusing.  I definitely like that type of feedback, because instead of me having to guess what error the reviewer is speaking of (since my definition of “not clear enough in the second paragraph” may be different from the reviewer’s definition), I can pinpoint exactly what needs to change this time.

This peer review also made me look at how I was reviewing.  I will definitely cite specific examples for others the next time we move into another peer review.  That’s something I hadn’t been doing but now I got the hang of it, and know what to do for next time.

Overall, it was the same process, I got feedback that was more “in-sync” this time.  By that I mean the opinions weren’t different for one paragraph, but collectively my reviewers said the same thing for a particular mistake, which also helps in pinpointing errors in my essay.  They also gave great feedback on what didn’t need to change.  I would definitely like this process to continue, it’s extremely helpful now.  I think the other reviewers are also getting a hang of the process as well, now that we are beginning to understand what is required of us in order to give a great review.

“The Elements of Style” First Impressions

My first impressions of Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style was actually pretty great.  I enjoy short and concise.  I never really corresponded the size of the book to it’s content like one of my classmates had mentioned in the discussion, however, this book’s size really does match what’s inside (Manguel anyone?).  I like short and to the point, however I think I would have left the introduction alone.  As I’ve said in the discussion, I just for some reason cannot get that idea of a Sergeant (or possibly even one of those strict elementary school teachers like Ms. Trenchbold off of Matilda) barking instructions at me that frankly are somewhat debatable and outdated in some areas.  This book so far is definitely something to reference to, but not necessarily something I would solely go off of if I wanted to know how to write. I still can’t get over that “Charles’s”.  My high school teacher would have a conniption fit.

As I go through this book further, I’m kind of starting to feel a bit “meh” about it.   I’m pretty much not seeing anything new.  For example, use to proper case of pronoun (Rule 10) or,  Do not break sentences in two, in other words, do not use periods.  As commas. Please. And thank you.  That’s all pretty much what’s been drilled in my head for most of my grade school years, and I feel that although these rules are conveniently compacted into one small book, it’s not to new.  Which leaves me feeling like “meh”, and also that instead of going to English classes I could have just picked up this book along with others if I wanted to have an idea on how to write.

Considering Some Youtube Videos

I must say that is assignment is going to be a challenge.  Not because it’s hard to connect the different types of “ancient style” to a commercial, but because there are so many commercials I can’t choose one to apply this knowledge to one!  I stumbled across two commercials that I thought I could possibly pick apart with ancient style.

This, believe it or not, is a Pantene commercial, which you wouldn’t catch that on first glance if you didn’t read the title.  The first things I thought about when I saw this commercial was the use of Sententia.  This arouses the emotion.  I struggled whether to classify this under the four categories of Sententia; personification, enargeia, irony and ethopoeia–but to no avail. I know it’s got a hint of personification towards the end, where the old violin tutor dies, and its almost as if she’s retaining his memory and skill in her performance.  So, in other words, he is the skill she possesses, although he is dead.

Or, maybe I’m overthinking it.

I’m still trying to figure that out.  Hopefully your comments will help somewhat.  But there’s no doubt this is definitely a powerful style that’s being used.

Now this fits under the tropes of ancient style.  I also noticed that Tiger Wood’s father is acting somewhat as a rhetor in this commercial.  The selection speaks about how rhetors often use questions to draw important points.  In this case, Tiger has his whole fiasco, and it seems like Nike wants to draw attention to his “repentance” so to speak.  He’s returning to golf, and the scene takes on a childlike theme, almost as if Earl is speaking to his 8 year old son that just knocked a glass of milk off of the table.

Obviously these are not set in stone, I’m finding that I may have to re-read Style by Crowley and Hawhee to get the full scope of how I could pick one of these apart in a 6 page essay if I do not find a simpler example.  Well, hope I do well on this.

Ancient Style

After reading Crowley and Hawhee’s Style, I left the PDF file feeling like “Man, can’t we come up with ANYTHING on our own?” I also left thinking that my high school teachers have cheated me! In all honesty, it is very amazing to me that our techniques and ways of writing styles parallel so much to those of the ancients.  I did, however, enjoy reading  each and every form of rhetorical style, especially when the authors described figures of thought.  I began to get a sense of this technology we call writing, and just as we’ve discussed with the last section, we’ve become extremely accustomed to what was once a tedious and well thought out creation.  It’s amazing to see that the ancient rhetors had a profound impact on what we know to be writing today and how they’re style has seeped into our very schools, our thoughts, and our speech. And to think this whole time I thought the way I wrote was just called “writing”, go figure.

I do however, recognize within this selection various ancient styles that seem to be what high school teachers deviate from.  Repetition, complex-compound sentences, and the like.  Interpositio was considered “beating around the bush” back in my high school days, so was antithesis, and my paper would suffer a bloody stabbing if I ever attempted to become a “modern rhetor”.  So how come, I ask, if this ancient style is so embedded into the way that we write (especially in creative writing), why do high school English teachers fight against it?  Then we come to post secondary school only to learn that “Hey, it’s okay”, so long as it’s used correctly.  Why not just teach us all how to use rhetorical style correctly?  It sure seems like a more interesting way to write. Well, at least the ancients obviously thought so.